


Accreditation

by DarkShadeless



Series: Long live the Emperor (whether he likes it or not) [7]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Legends: The Old Republic (Video Game)
Genre: (tho I guess Jaesa is technically Sith adjacent), And I mean that as a hard warning, Being made to talk against your will by funky mind powers, During an interrogation, Force compulsion, Gen, Sith being Sith, in PoV, of the 'just keep smiling you can do this' variety, possibly unhealthy coping mechanisms, the empire
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-06
Updated: 2019-10-06
Packaged: 2020-11-23 12:08:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,728
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20891873
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DarkShadeless/pseuds/DarkShadeless
Summary: Emara might be a touch nervous. It’s not every day you get a job interview like this one.





	Accreditation

**Author's Note:**

> As you might have noticed from the tags, I am incredibly sceptical as to how Force suggestion is generally depicted and normalized in Star Wars canon, SWTOR included.  
Enjoy :P

_Oh boy. Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy._

Emara Lorwe is a consummate professional but even consummate professionals get… nervous. Sometimes.

_Okay. Get a grip. Deep breaths._

The elevator keeps climbing higher mercilessly. Through the tinted transparisteel she had a view of Kaas City like few others. The Citadel overshadows even the taller skyscrapers in the distance.

_You can do this. You’ve done this your whole life! Come on. Up and at ‘em._

Easier thought than done. All pep talks that usually pick her up seem to fail her today. Getting rung up by the _Minister of Intelligence_ will do that to a person. Emara checks the fit of her skirt and blouse for what feels like the fiftieth time and tries and fails to calm her heartbeat.

She has worked with difficult people before. Tons of them. Comes with the territory.

Every military official and politician, moff to major municipal servant, will sooner or later have to make a public appearance and when they do they need someone like her. Someone who knows all the right cues, all the right things to say. A single word can make or break an image. Emara knows all about how quickly a faux-pas can cut you off at the knees.

That doesn’t help her feel more at ease in a situation where she lacks proper context. She has never worked for a _Sith_ before and if she kriffs this up she won’t work for anyone ever again.

_No pressure._

The time for dithering is over. The elevator stops with nary a sound. Emara tightens her grip on her suitcase and puts on her most professional smile.

* * *

“This way please, Miss Lorwe.”

“Thank you, sir.” Emara had to jump a few hoops just to get to the Minister himself. He does not give her a name past his title and she doesn’t ask. Suns and stars she’s in the rabbit hole here, isn’t she?

_No kidding._

The room he invites her to holds a metal table, two chairs that have been bolted to the floor and nothing else. Emara is glad she practiced her smile in the mirror until it became her go-to expression while she was still working as an assistant speech writer. She’s pretty sure she could smile through an apocalypse.

Sometimes she thinks about what that says about her.

Not today, because today she is smiling at someone who could make her fall off the face of this planet without breaking a sweat and asks, politely, “May I have a glass of water?”

The Minister doesn’t so much as raise an eyebrow. “Carbonated or plain?”

“Plain, please.”

He doesn’t leave. She hadn’t expected him to. Neither, however, does he sit down after gesturing for her to take a seat herself.

An incredibly awkward wait later the door opens behind her. Emara turns her unwavering smile on the young woman navigating the door with her drink in hand and starts to say, “Thank y-“ when their eyes meet. Her face registers, familiar, and then so do her clothes, only tangentially reminiscent of a dress because they’re not a dress at all. They’re robes.

_Jaesa Willsaam_. The Emperor’s apprentice. “-ou,” Emara finishes weakly.

Lord Willsaam’s cool gaze all but flays her. She puts the glass down in front of her as if a Sith Lord waiting on their guests is nothing out of the ordinary. “You are welcome, Miss Lorwe. Shall we begin?”

_Oh boy._

“Of course.” Always be prepared. Even a spontaneous speech needn’t be _spontaneous_. Neither does an interrogation Emara had expected the moment she got her invitation. “I have all of my pertinent documents with me, if you’d like to review-“

“Your credentials are of no interest to me.”

Hands already on her suitcase, Emara falters despite herself. Lord Willsaam sweeps past her and finally deigns to sit down. Her brown eyes are as fathomless as they are dark, boring into her own. She can’t seem to look away. “E-excuse me?”

“My master will decide for himself whether your work pleases him.” The young Sith folds her hands on the table fastidiously. Something about the gesture makes Emara suppress the desire to clear her throat. Her nerves sing like a plucked thread. “But first you will answer my questions.”

“Certainly. What would you like to-“

“Are you loyal to the Empire?”

_Oh. Boy._

“O-of course.” She fiddles with her suitcase, tries to put it back on the floor as naturally as possible and knows she is failing. Every nervous gesture grates against ingrained lessons on comportment but Emara can’t help responding to… what is she even responding to? “Yes.”

“Do you serve it gladly?”

“I-I suppose.” She almost winces at that answer. _Kriff. What is wrong with me?_

Despite her misstep, Willsaam’s expression remains placid, impossible to read. “You suppose. Would you die for your Emperor?”

Emara swallows, heavily. “I,“ she can’t go on. Her throat closes on the words. The girl opposite her with the angelic curls watches her struggle impassively.

“I see.” Her judgement is subtle but Emara winces under the lash of it. “Have you ever committed an act of treason?”

“No! Of course not!”

The walls are coming closer. Her hands are clammy. As if from far away she hears a male voice, sharper than it should be.

“My lord, that’s quite enough. I assure you, she passed every background check imaginable or she wouldn’t _be here_.”

For a single, liberating moment her interrogator allows herself to be distracted. Her eyes flicker to- to- the Minister. Of Intelligence. Then they find Emara’s again and she forgets he exists under the merciless pull of Willsaam’s demanding gaze that seems to drag on her very soul.

“When, how and why?”

Absently Emara is aware she is blinking away tears unsuccessfully. Wetness slides down her cheeks. No. It wasn’t anything, it didn’t matter and she was _never going to tell anyone_\- “When I was f-fifteen,” it’s dragged from the depths of her memories, where she buried it under smiles, pencil skirts and all the ways words can make the galaxy turn on its axis, “M-my father was a guard at- at the mayor’s o-office.” Once she has started she can’t seem to stop. “There was a party. An-,” No. Nothing can make her say her name. Not now and not ever. Emara forces it back down, syllable by syllable. It feels like swallowing a live vole. “A… friend,” she croaks out instead. A friend, a friend, a friend. Someone she might have liked as more than a friend. By all the little gods, she had been so stupid. “wanted to know how to get in and I- I told her.”

Suns and stars. How had she ever been so _stupid_? “Nothing happened. They- they crashed the buffet and the bar,“ her voice falls to a whisper, “Nothing happened.”

But it _could have_. There were high ranking military officials in attendance, _Moff Kilran_ himself had been there. Anyone could have used what she told Anya to get past security and-

Anyone. It hadn’t hit her until it was too late, until she was lying awake, not even invited along and furious about it. Only then it had occurred to her what she had _done_. Emara had never been so terrified in her entire life, before or after. People could have died. Her _father_ could have died. Someone could have come for her in the middle of the night and taken her away in cuffs.

She had gone on to become a picture-perfect student, a picture-perfect daughter and citizen and she had never made that kind of mistake again.

But she _had_ made it. Just that once.

The silence following her confession is damning.

Emara doesn’t realize she can breathe again until Lord Willsaam taps the table next to her wrist and startles her into a gasp that almost ends in a sob. The thought of looking at her is nothing short of paralyzing but she can’t not look, she has to look, not looking doesn’t mean she’ll go away, she’s not a monster under the bed and Emara is a grown woman who knows monsters won’t leave you alone when you don’t look-

Slowly, Emara raises her eyes from the tabletop. _She’s just a girl. Just a girl._

She has to clench her hands to keep her fingers from shaking. “Are we- are we done?” Gods she sounds like she has run a marathon on Hutta.

Jaesa Willsaam is looking back at her and for a moment Emara could swear her expression goes soft. “Yes.”

Great. Fantastic. She’s never coming back here, granted that they let her g-

“My master will see you now.”

... _oh boy._

* * *

Miss Lorwe is more than a little unsteady on her low heels when Keeper shows her out into the hall. He’s not sure she sees him. She seems a thousand miles away.

As ironic as it is, he can’t help but frown after her. She’s not an enemy of the state, for stars’ sake. Putting her through the wringer like that seems excessive. “Was that truly necessary?”

Willsaam’s cloak whispers with an unmindful step, closer than he is comfortable with. Keeper breathes through the instinctive flinch. Sith.

“She was hiding something.”

True. He is going to have words with his Minders over this. “A childhood indiscretion.”

“Yes.” Her voice is bland, factual and leaves no room for argument.

Truthfully, Keeper isn’t sure why he argues the point. Had he known Miss Lorwe _was_ hiding something he would have done much the same in his own way. Pushed until she broke.

But he didn’t. He didn’t know. A glance from the corner of his eye reveals that Willsaam is similarly looking after her victim, her expression unreadable.

After a shared moment of silence the corner of her mouth ticks into something that might be a smile. If it is, it doesn’t reach her eyes. Mildly, she says, “I think I liked you better before you started seeing me as a resource, Minister.”

The admonishment is plucked straight from half-formed thoughts Keeper hasn’t even had the chance to fully assess. His blood runs cold. “I’d appreciate it if you stayed out of my head.”

As always, Willsaam doesn’t rise to the challenge. She brushes past him. Keeper swears he hears a soft sound of amusement. “Would that I could. We rarely get what we want, don’t we?”

* * *

The sparse guards wave Emara along. She doesn’t really have the brain capacity to wonder why there are so few of them. There _are_ few of them. The whole level feels deserted, empty.

Shouldn’t there be more people here? It’s the residence of the_ Emperor_, or what passes for it in Kaas City itself. The way she understands it, Emperor Sar had summarily decided that ruling the Empire from Korriban was too much of a hassle and taken over the upper floors of the Imperial Citadel without mercy or a moment's hesitation. There might have been a footnote about consulting advice pertaining in-house damage control involved in the proposal for the position she is applying for. Emara wouldn't bet that the Emperor wrote that himself.

Suns and stars, her head is swimming.

Where is she even going?

Does it matter?

Emara zones out a little. All the corridors look the same. By the time two warriors in the iconic red of the Imperial Guard gesture for her to stop so they can scan her for illegal weaponry she has no idea where she is. They step aside for her.

She approaches the door they are watching over in a daze. It feels a little like a dream, the kind where you know what you have to do but not why. Slowly, she lifts her hand and knocks.

“Come in.”

It opens. That and the deep voice jar her out of her reverie. In a sudden rush the whole situation catches up with her. The interrogation, what she _admitted_, that she looks a mess. That she’s about to have an audience with the _Emperor_ who is just as much a Sith as his apprentice.

… she could have done with a little less clarity for a little while longer.

No way but forward. Emara hastily wipes the last tears off her cheeks. It’s all she can do to make herself presentable at this point. _Keep smiling_._ Take a deep breath and just keep smiling._

Void, she’s never applying to work for a Sith again, not that she _applied_ for this, exactly.

“My lord?” Is that right? Is that what you call the Emperor to his face? It’s what you call other Sith but that might also mean it’s not nearly enough in this situation. “Your Highness?” That’s… better. Probably.

By all the little gods, this is her _job_ how does she not _know what to say_? Didn’t she know this?

Emara takes a cautious step forward. The door closes behind her quietly. The wall opposite it is inlaid with a massive transparisteel window, looking out over Kaas City and the perpetual storm clouds on the horizon. The view is breath-taking even from across the room.

Apart from that detail it’s not quite what she expected. What must have once been an audience chamber has been stuffed haphazardly with office furniture. The sheer amount of data pads and folders full of flimsiplast documents, _actual physical copies of paperwork_, that have been shelved is staggering.

To her right, at a desk almost as massive as the stacks of files heaped on top of it, is where she finds the man she was looking for.

Emperor Sar is wearing his customary armor, which is the only reason Emara recognizes him, seeing as he has decided to forgo his full face helmet, presumably in favor of office work.

She takes a hesitant step closer.

After a few moments he deactivates his datapad and decides to acknowledge her. “Miss Lorwe, I presume.”

Emara, who is very, very conscious of her not-quite smeared make-up, and thank all the little gods for Dromund Kaas weather proof mascara, clears her throat to make sure she at least won’t sound like she has spent the last ten minutes and counting having a breakdown. “Yes, your Highness.”

Emperor Sar musters her quietly. She has no idea what he sees. When it seems he has looked his fill, he waves at a stack of data-chip containers that _floats_ out of the way at his direction. It unearths a chair. “Please, have a seat.”

Emara does not boggle. She has _some_ class and over a decade of experience in not batting an eye at any catastrophe her clients can come up with, which were a lot, even if none of them were _Sith_. “Thank you, your Highness.”

“You look like you could use a cup of tea.”

Does she? Probably.

Emara takes her seat as gracefully as she can manage, while the _Emperor_ turns over one of the teacups that have been hidden from view by the bureaucratic nightmare eating his desk. “I take it Jaesa is in rare form today.”

She accepts the beverage with faintly shaking hands. What do you even say to that? ‘Your apprentice is a monster?’ somehow she doesn’t think that would go over well.

His lips curve into a small smile. Emara’s shoulders start to unknot a little. Stars, she’s going to need a massage after this. Her Emperor, the most powerful man in their entire nation, watches her with eyes as warm and golden as the tea he poured her and waits on her to gather her wits patiently.

For all of that she feels faintly chilled under his scrutiny.

She won’t understand that until later. Someone had to teach his student, after all. He’s the cat to the kitten that just had a go at her.

But she doesn’t make that connection. Not yet. Today, she drowns her instinctive unease in a gulp of liquid gold, sweet as summer. Jeru tea. What a strange choice. She can count the times she has had it on one hand and have fingers left over. It is said to have calming properties, too. How fitting.

She breathes in its fragrance and steels herself. When she puts her cup down she is as calm as she is going to get. She gives her overlord her best smile and pushes everything but her work from her mind.


End file.
